The two most striking and distinctive features of Kerala, a) the abundance of coconuts trees everywhere and b) the fact that there are more Mammooty posters than road signs.

I arrived in Kerala a few days ago, and we spent the first couple of nights in Munnar, one of most beautiful places I’ve ever been in. We were fortunate enough to get the Presidential Suite in our hotel and along with it, we got probably the best view in the whole of Munnar, a 270 degree panoramic view of the mountains and tea plantations.

On the first day, we saw quite a few places around Munnar including went for a boat ride and an elephant ride. The view from our room balcony was to die for, and I would’ve gladly spent more time in the balcony than roaming around the place.

The second day was more of travelling. We went to Cochin, had a great traditional South Indian Meal, which I’d missed a lot, and finally hopped onto the train to Trivandrum.

Travelling on Indian trains is an unique experience which every person should experience atleast once in their lifetime. It had been quite sometime since I had gone on the train and therefore, I was quite eager to get on the train. Once on the train, the feeling was great, something which words cant describe, the feeling of being back home.

We spent about half of today at the Kovalam Beach which is a very interesting beach with lots of activities and people. All civilian boats were not allowed to go in the sea today as the Vice President was visiting a place by the seaside. However, we managed to get a boatride with a fishing party in a catamaran. It was a very fun boatride, listening to the fishermen trying to spot the fish and lay the net out, and also enjoying the cool breeze of the sea and the gentle rocking of the boat.

Lunch consisted of delicious seafood, at a rooftop restaurant with a great view and an atmosphere which elevated to a land of bliss and happiness. We spent awhile in that restaurant since all of us felt a sense of calm and peace there.

After that, we went to a whole host of places, and finally retired for the day. We’ve got a lot planned out for tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to that.

Photography opportunities have popped up everywhere and I’ve clicking like a madman. I will only be able to upload photographs after I get back home as I dont have the necessary software here with me. The 365 Day Project will also be updated once I get back home to Hyderabad.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I spent the whole of Sunday in London. It took a while to get there, and both the train and tube journeys were extremely boring and monotonous. I tried to walk from the hotel to the Heathrow, quite unsuccessfully and ended up walking in circles and finally caught a bus. Once in the main city of London, I took ‘The Original Tour‘ in an open top bus for about 3 hours. It was a good ride as I got to see most of the tourist attractions in a short span of time. London was an interesting city, with lots of places to visit, possibly in the future. And as with other English cities, the sun set at around 1630hrs and after some more walking around in random streets, I went back to the hotel.

My plane was on Monday morning to Dubai, spent a couple of hours there, walking about. My plane to Hyderabad landed at around 3 in the morning.The baggage was delayed infinitely and I had almost given up on my suitcase arriving when I saw it tottering along. I grabbed it, and ran out to be greeted by my dad. Meeting my family after 3 months was a pleasurable experience.

Being back home is a great feeling, although I do miss Essex. I met up with school friends day before yesterday, you can see the photos in ‘18-12-2007‘ under ‘Everyday Photographs‘. And yesterday, I went to Lotus Park along with friends from the Hyderabad Photography Club and we had a great time there. You can see the photos from the trip here. I also got a chance to try out a friend’s Canon 100 - 400mm lens which is a fabulous lens, but a bit too expensive for me. I tried out another friend’s Canon 50mm 1.8 too, and its pretty amazing for its price. I’ve decided to buy one before going back to University.

I played on my Wii today after a long time, it was quite fun and I had almost forgotten how fun it was playing the Wii. I also played Warioware: Smooth Moves which is a lot of fun and quite amusing.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I finally made the ‘Everyday Photographs‘ category today. I’ve uploaded photographs that I took when I went to town today. Make sure you take a look and leave some feedback.

And News, since I dont have anything else to fill this post with.

On Sept 10th 2001 The Pentagon Misplaced 2 Trillion Dollars

TIME Magazine’s 50 Top 10 Lists for 2007

New light gives off 24/7 light for 12 Years w/o electricity

16 Inspirational Portrait Photography Techniques

Indiana Jones 4 Poster Revealed!

101 Reasons Why Hugh Hefner is The Man

Mysterious mammal caught on film

“Very Good If You Need to Write on Paper” - A Pen Review

Scientists Discover How to Make Robots Bounce on Water

Amazing Art on Egg Shell

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I went to the Gliding Club on Saturday night for my first fully fledged English Christmas Dinner. I had a great time there, food was awesome and met lots of new people. I had a taste of how a traditional English dinner was done and it was a new and interesting experience. We spent the night there and sat around talking about completely random things until 4 in the morning. You can see the photos of the event at the Gliding Club website here. Some of the photos were taken by a friend and some were taken by me.

I’ve already started planning my trip back home since I’ll be back in about a week, and I’m really looking forward to getting back home, a) for my family and friends and more importantly, b) for the food.

Also, I’ve decided that uploading a single photograph everyday is not enough to showcase all my photos so I will most probably be creating a separate category called ‘Everyday Photos’ and create sub-categories for each day. At first I was thinking that I should probably utilize the already existing ‘Photography‘ category but then I thought I wouldn’t be bothered to add photographs everyday into individual categories and this would be simpler and easier. The category will have a sub-category for each day with good photographs. These photographs can be anything I take on that day, from my friends, to macros to landscapes. And of course, if there is a special event on a particular day, it will get its own separate category. I know it sounds a little confusing but I plan on creating the categories tonight so once it’s done, it should clear up all the confusion.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

We went to town yesterday, for a huge shopping trip. Although we spent only about 4 hours there, we went to a lot of places, and spent a lot of money. We picked up many random things that caught our eye, but those things only were a small part of our buys. I also found a used Sunpak 140 Flash, which was a bargain at £2. I didn’t expect it to work but surprisingly, it did work and even though it isn’t very powerful and does not have a manual mode, it’s quite useful.

My main bank-breakers were a pair of Creative 2.1 Speakers, which are simply amazing and definitely worth the money. I also got ‘The Orange Box‘, which I can only play after I get home since my laptop cant handle it and I’m eagerly looking forward to playing it, ‘Warioware : Smooth Moves‘, which was recommended by several friends as a good multiplayer game for the Wii, and finally, ‘GTA III‘, because it’s such a classic and remains my favorite GTA Game to date. I was shocked by the amount of money I had spent on the games, but I guess quality entertainment doesn’t come cheap.

My new Hard Disk also arrived today. Its a 500GB Western Digital MyBook and looks quite sleek and compact. Its silent and doesn’t heat up fast. I’m glad that it finally came since I was rapidly running out of space on the laptop. You can see it in today’s photo of the day.

My only concern from these purchases is the huge amount of wires and cables which are currently behind my laptop screen but are visible once I close the laptop, and to be honest, look pretty ugly. I don’t think I can do much about it for now so I’ll have to learn to live with it.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!